Cardinals fans can finally see how Oliver Marmol's hands are tied by John Mozeliak

I get there are a lot of St. Louis Cardinals fans who do not like the club's manager, Oliver Marmol, but when it comes to Erick Fedde and Miles Mikolas remaining in their rotation, that decision goes well above his paygrade, and frankly, he would love to, call up Michael McGreevy and shake things up to.

The Cardinals announced on Thursday to the media that Fedde would be making his next start on Saturday after the club internally deliberated on that this past week. While Mikolas has been bad this year too, although he had a nice start against the Nationals last night, Fedde has been even worse as of late. Following Fedde's last start, Marmol made it clear to the media that he did not see how rolling Fedde back out there again like normal was a good idea, but that the club needed to discuss next steps.

Even before the club had Marmol announce Fedde would be starting Saturday, Marmol had made it abundantly clear how he felt, but how it also was not his decision to make.

Marmol does a weekly spot on KMOX every Tuesday with some of their contributors, and their conversation this week shone so much light onto his frustration with the situation. He started their conversation about Fedde and Mikolas by saying that the decision is not just a manager's decision, and he even said that to him, hitting the repeat button did not make sense. Then, when Tom Ackerman brought up that John Mozeliak said McGreevy is lurking, Marmol laughed to himself after he heard that Mozeliak said "We can't hold him down forever", and said "Um, you guys know where I stand on McGreevy. Love the kid. Love having him here.

He was finally asked by Bernie Miklasz if he would consider doing a bullpen game or going to Steven Matz on Saturday rather than starting Erick Fedde, and he gave about as revealing of an answer about the lack of power he has in this decision as he could possibly give without blatantly saying it.

"Um, yes. Here's the reality. And I'm trying to figure out how honest to be publicly here. It's not... there's a lot of people at the table to make that decision, okay? And at the end of the day, I want to do what is best for that clubhouse and giving us the best shot to move forward and continue to win games, and that's all part of the discussion will be over the next few days."

I highly recommend watching this supercut I complied together of Marmol's reactions and responses during this interview. There is no way to watch this and not see how Marmol is frustrated by this situation and disagrees with how the front office is handling it.

Oliver Marmol's hands are tied by John Mozeliak when it comes to doing what is best for this Cardinals team

Of course, Marmol, who is clearly not a fan of this plan to have Fedde in the rotation, was the one who had to make the announcement to reporters on Thursday, and when he was asked about if other factors played into that decision beyond his on-field performance, Marmol was blunt about how that.

I'm pretty open about my belief in Marmol as the Cardinals' manager, but that doesn't mean I can't be objective about this. Marmol is not a perfect manager by any means. He makes mistakes and has his flaws, but I really do believe he gets far more flak than he deserves from this fan base, and this situation with Mozeliak shines further light onto that.

No, Marmol is not a "puppet". If he were a "puppet" of Mozeliak, he would hold the company line and not allow any sniff of disagreement to be had publicly. Instead, he has been pretty vocal about his frustration with this situation, but doing so in a shrewd way that won't get him into too much trouble with his superiors.

The worst thing Marmol could do right now for his job security would be to make a scene about all of this. His boss, Mozeliak, is going to be stepping down in just a few months. If Marmol wants to manage the Cardinals beyond 2025, which I have no doubt he will at this rate, he shouldn't rock the boat more than he needs to, and he can hopefully have a better experience working under Chaim Bloom in the near future.

I'm not saying Mozeliak isn't a good guy or that all he does is mess things up, but it's pretty clear that he continues to get in his own way, and even more frustrating, in the way of his players and manager, when it comes to fielding the best team possible. Marmol will surely have disagreements with Bloom in the future, but I can't imagine Bloom would allow something this crazy to happen when he's in charge.

Now, if I am being honest, since Bloom isn't the one "calling the shots" right now, he may not actually have a problem with this. Honestly, this whole Fedde situation is a win-win for him. If it continues to blow up in Mozeliak's face, it will make fans crave his leadership even more. If Fedde can muster up enough trade value to be moved here in a few weeks, well, that helps Bloom too.

But if Bloom were calling the shots right now and trying to guide this team to October, Fedde would have been off the team this past offseason, or at least earlier this week. Mikolas would have been gone a long time ago as well. And you know what? Marmol would have loved that as well.

Instead, Marmol has to hope and pray that Fedde is better come Saturday, as he has no choice in the matter of whether or not Fedde takes the ball this start or even potential starts to follow.

John Mozeliak has the power to end this madness, and yet, he seems to enjoy living in this false reality that his bad investments are going to somehow turn this around. Mozeliak loves himself a sunk cost fallacy.